IM 



11 I 



ON OF 




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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No._. 

Shelf__LB_?>^7 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE EVOLUTION 



OF 



THE COLLEGE STUDENT 



BY 



,/ 



WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE 



President of Bowdoin College 



I APR 181898 



New York: 46 East 14TH Street 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

Boston : 100 Purchase Street 



2nd COPY, 
1898, 



•WO COPIES BECtiVED- 



.Hs 



6158 



Copyright, 1898, 
By Thomas Y, Ckowell & Compai^y. 



C. J. Petees & SON, Typogeaphees, 
Boston. 



PREFACE. 



The college student is a being of iniinitely complex 
and swiftly shifting phases which external description 
is powerless to catch and reproduce. The only way to 
portray his deeper nature is to place him in intimate and 
confidential relations and let him ^^ give himself away.'' 
This kinetoscopic picture is presented in the hope that 
it may assure over-anxious parents that not every aberra- 
tion of their sons is either final or fatal : persuade critics 
of college administration that our problem is not so 
simple as they seem to think: and inspire the public 
with the conviction, cherished by every college officer, 
that college students, with all their faults and follies, 
are the best fellows in the world ; and that notwith- 
standing much crude speculation about things human, 
and some honest scepticism concerning things divine, 
the great social institutions of family and industry and 
church and state may be safely intrusted to their true 
hearts and generous hands. 

This sketch was drawn for the University Club of 
Buffalo in response to a request for something which 
would " show the graduate the inner life of the college 
of to-day." Under the title " His College Life,'' it was 
published in Scrihner^s Magazine for June, 1896, and it 
is through the kind courtesy of Charles Scribner's Sons 
that it appears in its present form. 



THE ETOLUTIOl^ 
OF THE COLLEQE STUDEE^T. 



FRESHMAN SORROWS. 

Bradford Coiii^EGE, October 24, 1893. 

Dear Father, — Your letter, with welcome check en- 
closed, is at hand. I note your advice to '^wear the 
same sized hat, and keep sawing wood ; " but really I 
didn't need it ; for the Sophs attend to the former, and 
the Profs provide for the latter. 

No, I am not suffering from ^^ swelled head " yet. You 
know you wished me to keep up my music. Last week 
a notice was put up on the bulletin-board, inviting all 
candidates for the College Glee Club to appear at a cer- 
tain room at nine o'clock Saturday evening. Among 
the candidates who came were two other Preshmen and 
myself. They told us that we must all put on dress 
suits, as personal appearance was a large element in fit- 
ness for the position. As I did not have any, they lent 
me one, or rather parts of two, waistcoat and trousers 
that were far too small, and a coat that was miles too 
big. Then they had us come in and make bows, and 
shoAV how we would lead in a prima donna. Then they 
had us stand on our heels and sing low notes ; stand on 
tiptoes and sing high notes ; sing everything we knew, 

5 



6 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

from comic songs to the doxology in long metre ; and 
finally, about half-past eleven, dismissed us with the 
statement that the other two were the better singers, but 
that my presence and personal appearance was greatly 
in my favor, and that the decision would be announced 
on the bulletin-board the next morning. We had not 
been out of the room two minutes before we realized 
that we had been awfully ^^ taken in." I did not sleep 
much that night ; and whenever I fell into a doze, the 
vision of that bulletin-board would dance before my eyes 
and wake me up. If ever I wished I was dead and 
buried, I did that night. It seemed as if I could never 
get up and go to breakfast, where they would all be 
talking about it, and walk into chapel with everybody 
knowing what a fool I had made of myself the night 
before. It made me wish I either had taken my dose of 
this sort of thing three years ago at a fitting school, or 
else had gone to one of the great universities, where a 
fellow is simply a unit in the vast whole, of whom no- 
body takes the slightest notice. But you always said 
that the small colleges have a great advantage over the 
large ones, in the fact that here the individual is made 
to be somebody, and take the consequences of his own 
action upon his own head. Well, I have made an ass of 
myself to begin with, and everybody knows it and is 
guying me about it. But I am getting used to it, and 
don't mind it as much as I did. I have had a good many 
calls by way of congratulation on my election to the Glee 
Club ; and as these were the first calls of persons I had 
not had the privilege of knowing before, it seemed ap- 
propriate (and I was informed that it was an established 
college custom) that I should treat. I think that by 
taking the thing good-naturedly, and entertaining my 



FRESHMAN SOBROWS. 7 

guests handsomely, I have made more friends than I 

have lost. 

Your affectionate son, 

Clarence Mansfield. 

Bradford College, November 6, 1893. 

Dear Mother, — You say you are " afraid I am home- 
sick/' for I write all ^^ about things at home and noth- 
ing about things here." Well, I have been just a bit 
homesick ; but I am getting bravely over it. This time 
I will try to tell you the things you want to know. 

You needn't worry about my clothes ; they are all 
right. I tore a three-cornered hole in my trousers the 
other day, but I fixed it up first-rate. I tried one of 
those fine needles to begin with, but it was no use. So 
I fished out a darning-needle, got some black linen 
thread, and went at it. I took the thread double and 
twisted, left a long end at the beginning, sewed it over 
and over, as you call it, taking stitches about a quarter 
of an inch apart, fetched back the end next to the needle 
to the long end I left at the beginning, and tied them 
together. Some Sophs made great fun of it ; wanted to 
know if I was trying to demonstrate the po7is asinorum 
on my trousers leg. That night I ripped up the whole 
seam, or whatever you call it, I had made, turned the 
trousers wrong side ont, proceeded as before, except 
that I took stitches only half as big, tied the ends on 
the inside where they don't show, and the trousers look 
as good as ever. 

You ask particularly about my religious life. I don't 
know what to say. The first morning I went to chapel 
some one, who seemed to be the usher, asked me if I 
wonld like to rent a sitting. I was fool enough to give 



8 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

him a dollar for a seat ; and then he ushered me into a 
pew at one side near the front which is reserved for the 
Faculty. I tell you I didn't feel much like praying that 
morning. 

The first really familiar and homelike thing I found 
when I came here was the Y. M. C. A. reception to the 
Freshmen. A large number of the students and several 
of the Faculty were present. There were a few ad- 
dresses of an informal nature by the professors. Then 
we sang hymns, and refreshments were served. I got 
acquainted with three of the professors, one to whom I 
recite, and the whole affair went a long way toward 
making me feel at home here. 

As for the meetings — well, I go to them regularly. 
I cannot say I altogether enjoy them. Some of the fel- 
lows have such wonderful experiences of grace that I 
don't know what to make of it. I never had anything 
of the kind. If that is essential to a man's being a 
Christian — why I simply am not in it. I can't conceive 
of myself as feeling like that. I don't see the sense of 
it. It doesn't seem natural. I want to do right. I 
know I do wrong. I know I need to be turned right 
about face once in so often, or else I should go straight 
down hill. And I am glad to spend an hour each week 
with fellows who are trying to get a brace in the same 
direction. 

To tell the truth, I don't get much out of church here. 
The ministers are smart enough, and they roll out great 
glowing periods. But when they are through I cannot 
tell for the life of me what they have been driving at. 
You hear a lot about justification, sanctification, and 
atonement ; and then you hear a lot about Phrygia, 
Pamphylia, and Mesopotamia. Once in a while there 



FRESHMAN SOBROWS. 9 

comes along a man who seems to understand us. He 
will throw out some practical and moral problem that 
we are grappling with ; pile up the arguments in favor 
of the indulgence just as they pile up in our own minds ; 
and then turn around, knock them all to splinters, and 
show how much more noble and manly it is to overcome 
temptation ; and show us Christ as the great champion 
in the moral and spiritual warfare of the world. 

It is a good deal harder to be a Christian here in col- 
lege than it was at home, and the things that ought to 
be a help seem to be a hindrance. I expect to have 
rather a sorry time of it here for a while; but by far 
the greatest of my sorrows is that I have not been more 

faithfully, 

Your dutiful and grateful boy, 

Clarence Mansfield. 

Bradford College, May 30, 1894. 
My dear Helen, — I wonder if time flies as swiftly 
with you Willoughby College girls as with us ? It seems 
but yesterday that we were gliding along together to the 
music of the merry sleigh-bells over the glistening snow. 
Of course you have your good times there. Your after- 
noon teas tendered by Sophomores to Ereshmen ; your 
debates in the gymnasium on municipal suffrage for 
women ; your Halloween frolics ; your basket-ball con- 
tests ; your boat-races rowed for form only ; your mid- 
night lunches interrupted by " the Pestilence that 
walketh in darkness," — that nickname of yours for a 
meddlesome Prof beats the record, — are all very delight- 
ful as portrayed in your charming letters ; but compared 
with foot-ball and base-ball, boxing and fencing, rushes 
and tugs-of-war, turkey suppers on the Paculty table 



10 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

with any one of three parties the owner of the turkeys, 
the college authorities or the upper-classmen liable to 
swoop down on you at any moment and gobble up the 
feast, I must confess that your worst dissipation seems 
a little tame. 

I have no doubt, however, that you make up in study 
what is lacking in sport. I haven't seen anybody here 
quite so completely carried away with Sophocles, or so 
in love with the Odes of Horace, or so fascinated with 
German syntax, as you seem to be. Your lamentations 
over spherical trigonometry, however, would evoke many 
a responsive moan. That was really credible from a col- 
lege man's point of view ; but if I were not so sure of 
your thorough genuineness and sincerity, I should set 
down those raptures about philologies and trilogies either 
to satire or to affectation. We men are not taken that 
way. I am glad you like them, though. To see a little 
gleam of sense, real or imaginary, through the intermin- 
able technical jargon a fellow has to grind out, must be 
a relief. I am heartily glad for you if the gods have 
granted you such a special dispensation. 

I must confess, though, that I am beginning to get a 
real hold of Greek. Professor Bird has us read the 
whole of an author in translation ; write essays on the 
times, characters, customs, and institutions ; and then 
read in the original such passages as are specially sig- 
nificant in throwing light on the main characters and 
events. We get the life first in this way, and the let- 
ters afterward as the expression of that life. Then, too, 
he shows pictures of Greek architecture and art with 
the stereopticon in the evening ; tells us the story of the 
statues of which we have casts in the Art Building, and 
of the coins and vases in the cases there. Life is inte- 



/ FBESHMAN SORROWS. 11 

resting in all its forms ; and it is slowly dawning upon 
me that these old fellows lived about the gayest, freest, 
loveliest life men ever lived on earth. But from the 
way Greek was ground out in the high school one would 
never have dreamed the old dry roots once had such 
sweet juice in them. And some of the other languages 
here are taught by young fellows fresh from German or 
German- American institutions, who regard the text, even 
of Horace or Goethe or Moliere, as just so much gram- 
matical straw to thrash the syntax out of. When I see 
what Greek is, and what the other languages and litera- 
tures might be, if only we had a man and not a thesis in 
cap and gown to teach them, it makes me mad. And 
yet you girls fall down and worship just that sort of a 
creature ! ! 

Boys and girls make very different kinds of students. 
I think we get along better apart than together. You 
are docile, conscientious, and at least outwardly courte- 
ous. You eat whatever is set before you, asking no 
questions for consciences' sake. You study just as hard 
whether you like a subject or not. You do your best 
every time. 

Now, that is very sweet and lovely. But I should 
think it would spoil your teachers to treat them that 
way. With us it is different. If we don't like a thing, 
we say so. As for these fellows that try to cram their 
old philology down our throats, we make their existence 
pretty uncomfortable. The other day the Latin tutor 
asked a fellow the gender of ovum, and he answered, 
"You can't tell until it's hatched." They won't teach 
us anything we wa,nt to know, and so we won't learn 
anything they want to teach. We keep asking the same 
old question over and over again, and make him explain 



12 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT, 

the simplest of all his favorite fine distinctions every 
time it occurs. Well, I must stop somewhere. I really 
did not know I was so interested in my studies, or had 
so many theories of education. You always understand 
me better than anybody else does. When I began this 
letter, I didn't think I cared much about these things 
anyway. But you are so in earnest about them that I 
believe I have caught the inspiration. I am a many- 
sided being; some sides are good and some are bad; 
some are wise and some are very foolish. You always 
bring out the best side ; and for fear of deceiving you, 
and making you think I am better than I really am, I 
have to let you inside, and show you just how foolish 
and light-minded I am. If I always had you to talk to, 
I think I should be a very much more diligent student 
than I am. Not that I crave co-education. Oh, no ! 
What Emerson says of friendship is especially true of 
the friendship of college boys and girls : " The condition 
which high friendship demands is ability to do without 
it. There must be very two before there can be very 
one. Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long 
probation.'' I wish you would read the whole essay. I 
am immensely fond of it ; and I always think of you 
when I read it. The two writers I love best are Carlyle 
and Emerson, although I don't profess to understand 
much of either of them. Carlyle braces me up when I 
am tempted to loaf and shirk ; Emerson tones me down 
when I am tempted to pretence and insincerity. Both 
tend to make me more simple and true and real — more 
like what you are, and what I fondly fancy you would 
like to have me be. 

Your faithful friend, 

Clakence Mansfield. 



SOPHOMORE CONCEITS. 13 



SOPHOMORE CONCEITS. 

Bradford College, October 25, 1894. 

Dear Father, — ISTow that it is all over, I suppose I 
may as well tell you about it. Perhaps you saw in the 
Herald that we came near having a class rebellion here 
yesterday. We have a time-honored custom here known 
as the Nightgown Drill ; the fellows put on their rohes 
de nuit outside of their other garments, and with ban- 
ners and transparencies reflecting upon the characteris- 
tics of unpopular men and measures, amid songs and 
shouts, parade the town. There is no harm in it, though 
I suppose tl^at to the staid and dignified citizen it does 
not present a very edifying spectacle. 

This time two or three of us ventured to wear, into 
Professor Bird's recitation-room the next morning, some 
vestiges of the attire which had done duty the previous 
evening. Professor Bird said that if we wished to make 
fools of ourselves on the public streets he, as an indi- 
vidual, had nothing to say about it ; but that when it 
came to bringing such nonsense into his recitation-room 
he would not stand it, and we might leave the room at 
once. 

Immediately after recitation the class held a rousing 
indignation meeting in Old College Hall, and passed the 
following resolutions : That " we, the members of the 
Class of 1897, most emphatically and indignantly pro- 
test against this act of tyranny and usurpation, and that 
we will attend no more college exercises until this wrong 
shall be redressed.'^ 

As I was one of the persons especially aggrieved I was 
made chairman of a committee of three, which was ap- 



14 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUBENT. 

pointed to wait upon the president and present our 
resolutions. 

He listened very respectfully to our representations. 
When we had finished he said that there seemed to be a 
hopeless division of opinion on the subject; the Faculty 
being firmly and finally committed to the position taken 
by Professor Bird^ and the class being equally tenacious 
of the position taken in the resolutions. Accordingly, 
he proposed that we should refer the whole subject to 
a committee of three alumni, of whom the class should 
name one, the president should name one, and the two 
thus appointed should name the third. 

The class, after some discussion, voted to accept the 
president's proposition ; and we appointed as our repre- 
sentative on this committee a young graduate of the 
previous year who had been a leader in all manner of 
deviltry while he was in college, and is hanging around 
the college this year as a self-appointed coach of the 
foot-ball team until he can find something to do. We 
went back and reported that we had accepted his propo- 
sition, and named our referee. The president then 
gravely announced that he had selected you as his rep- 
resentative on the committee to which the matter should 
be referred ; that he would telegraph for you at once ; 
and that he should expect me and the others interested 
to appear before the committee in the precise apparel 
which had been the occasion of the controversy. 

You can imagine that I was a good deal taken back. 
I did not relish having you called down here from your 
business, two hundred miles, to sit in judgment on that 
question. I thought I could anticipate the decision, and 
the manner in which it would be delivered. So I per- 
suaded the class to drop the matter, and we have re- 
sumed attendance at recitations. 



SOPHOMORE CONCEITS. 15 

I give you the full account. Tliis is all there is in it. 
The reporters got hold of it, and have written it up with 
a great deal of exaggeration and embellishment. So if 
you read my name or see my photograph in connection 
with the instigation of a great rebellion, don't be dis- 
turbed, and tell mother not to worry. 

Your affectionate son, 

Clarence. 



Bradford College, November 30, 1894. 

Mt dear Helen, — The foot-ball season is over, and 
I must tell you about it. As you know, we won the 
championship, and I happened to play quite an impor- 
tant part in it. The opposing team was made up of 
great giants from the farms ; while our team were mostly 
light city boys, quick as lightning, and up to all the 
tricks and fine points. Their game was to mass them- 
selves on one weak point in the line, and pound away at 
that time after time. In spite of all that we could do 
they would gain a few feet each time, and it looked as 
though they would win by steadily shoving us inch by 
inch down the field. When they had it almost over, we 
made a great brace and held them, and got the ball. 

Then we made a long gain, bringing the ball within 
forty yards of their goal. The time Avas nearly up ; and 
if we had lost it again, the game would have been either 
a tie or a defeat. As a last resort the signal was given 
for a goal from the field. The ball was passed to me. I 
had just time for a drop kick in the general direction of 
the goal, without an instant for taking aim, when their 
biggest man came down on me -, and that was the last I 
can remember. As all my force had gone into the kick, 



16 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

and I was standing still, and had almost lost my balance 
in the act of kicking^ while he weighed seventy pounds 
more than I, and was coming at full speed, you can ima- 
gine that I went down with a good deal of force onto 
the frozen ground. 

The next thing I knew I was in my room, and the doc- 
tor was working over me. To my first question, " Was 
it a goal ? " the captain replied, " Yes, old man ; you won 
the game for us.'^ My injury proved to be nothing seri- 
ous, and a few stitches in a scalp wound was all the med- 
ical treatment necessary. By the way, don't mention 
this part of the affair around home, where the folks will 
be likely to hear of it. They would worry, and that 
would do no good. I was at some loss how to charge up 
the doctor's bill on my cash account ; but in view of the 
stitches, I charged it to " sewing." I am just having a 
glorious time of it this year. There are lots of foolish 
girls here, as there are everywhere, and I don't see why 
a fellow should not have some fun with them. My foot- 
ball prowess has opened the- doors of all the best society 
to me, and I am lionized wherever I go. I can take my 
pick of the girls, and I get along with them first-rate. 
They talk foot-ball as soon as they are introduced, and 
that is a subject on which I feel perfectly at home. 
There are half a dozen on whom I have made a perfect 
mash ; and perhaps I ought to confess that there is one 
in particular toward whom I am inclined to reciprocate. 
She is a little older than I (some of the fellows who are 
jealous of me call her the. college widow), but with shrug- 
ging of her shoulders and elevating her eyes when one 
makes a particularly piquant remark, she is young enough 
in her manner. We led the dance the other evening ; and 
it was great fun to see the fellows green with envy, and 



SOPHOMORE CONCEITS. 17 

the longing looks of more than one girl, whose eyes as 
much as said, '^ Oh, if I were only where that girl is." 

I was considerably amused at the account you gave 
of your harmless serenade under the windows of the 

obstreperous Miss K , but I was disgusted at the 

specimen of petticoat government that followed. How 
perfectly absurd to scold a set of such innocent and 
guileless creatures, who never entertained so much as a 
shadow of a naughty thought in all your lives. 

Our dean wouldn't have made such a fuss over a little 
thing like that. Let me tell you what happened here 
the other night. We have an instructor whom we hate. 
I don't know just why. He is a wooden fellow. He 
tries to apply high-school methods of discipline and in- 
struction to college men ! Just think of it ! We don't 
propose to stand it. So we " fixed " his recitation-room 
the other night, and among other things propped up the 
skeleton from the Medical School in his chair, and put 
between his teeth strips of paper on which the instruc- 
tor's oft-recurring phrases were inscribed. I was in it. 
The dean got onto it, and I was summoned to his office. 
I expected I should catch it, and was making arrange- 
ments to leave town on an early train. 

The dean, however, did not refer to the affair once. 
He said that he was afraid that I was not giving to my 
studies the undivided attention that they deserved, and 
asked what was the trouble ? We talked over my plans 
and purposes in so far as I have any ; and then he tried 
to show me how these studies in general, and the one 
which is taught in that room in particular, have a vital 
relation to my whole intellectual future. I never real- 
ized before how hard the college is trying, with very 
scanty resources, to provide for us a satisfactory course, 



18 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

or how interested in our individual welfare the officers 
of it are. I came away with a very much better under- 
standing of what I am here for. I had a very pleasant 
interview, and was almost glad to have had it ; though 
after the tacit understanding to which we came, it would 
be fearfully embarrassing to have another based on a 
similar offence. I shall give the college no further 
trouble along that line, I assure you. 

Now, was not this masculine mode of discipline better 
than yours ? Women seem to read their Scriptures to 
the effect that without shedding of tears there shall be 
no remission of mischief. We men don't take much 
stock in tears. And such tear-provoking talk as seems 
to be so efficacious with you girls would run off from 
our toughened consciences like water off a duck's back. 

Now, my dear Helen, if I seem to hold women in gen- 
eral, and women's ways of doing things, in somewhat 
light esteem, you know I regard you as a shining excep- 
tion, and think whatever you do is perfect, and know you 
must have looked perfectly lovely even in those absurd 

and wasted tears. 

Faithfully your friend, 

Clarence Mai^sfield. 

Bradford College, April 8, 1895. 
Dear Mother, — That is just like you, mother, ^^ to 
look with more favor on my friendship for Helen than 
on my passion for Kate," or the ^^ college widow," as 
you hatefully insist on calling her. You are a woman, 
and you can't see things as I do. Why, Kate just 
adores me ; idolizes me ; says that in all the history of 
the college there never was a fellow quite like me. Now, 
that is the sort of a girl for me. She makes me feel 



SOP HOMO BE CONCEITS. 19 

satisfied with myself. And she is pretty and fasci- 
nating. 

As for Helen, what do you think she had the imperti- 
nence to write to me. I had written her a nice letter, 
in which, to be sure, I made one or two slighting and 
patronizing references to women in general and petticoat 
government for colleges in particular, and this is what 
I got. 

You Horrid, Conceited Thing, — No, I thank you. If you 
cannot respect my sex, and speak respectfully of my college, 
please pay no more of your silly compliments to a " shining ex- 
ception." 

P. S. If in addition to the fact of feminine foolishness, of 
which you are so well assured, you wish to continue your studies 
into the philosophy of the phenomenon, and in spite of her being 
a woman will for once consult the world's greatest novelist (per- 
haps you can bring yourself to it, in view of her masculine pseu- 
donym), you are most respectfully referred to a remark of Mrs. 
Poyser on the subject. 

Now, you surely don't suppose a college Sophomore is 
going to stand such talk as that. The remark referred 
to is, 'Tm not denyin' that women are foolish; God 
Almighty made 'em to match the men." 

I have had enough of Helen. What a fellow wants 
of a girl is some one to reflect with a halo of sympathy 
and admiration his own views and opinions. He doesn't 
want to be stirred up and set to thinking. ISTow, you 
know I want to please you in everything. But in these 
matters you must admit that I am a more competent 
judge of what suits me than anybody else can be for 
me. I always respected Helen, and do still ; but for real 
solid happiness all to ourselves, give me Kate every time. 
So don't worry, mother. It will all come out right in 
the end, and you will come to see these things as I do. 



20 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

As for the Y. M. C. A. and that sort of thing which 
you inquire about, to tell the truth, I haven't been much 
lately. Between foot-ball and society my time has been 
pretty well taken up. I believe in having a good time, 
and letting everybody else have the same ; I believe in 
father's version of the Golden Eule, which is, you know, 
'' Do to others as you think they would do to you if they 
had a chance." I don't see why we should try to cast 
our lives in the narrow and contracted grooves marked 
out for us in primitive times, when the world was just 
emerging from barbarism. 

I recognize, of course, that life, like every game, has 
its rules, which you must obey if you want to get any 
fun out of it. But it strikes me that for the rules of 
life you must go to the men who have studied life from 
its first beginnings in plant and animal, up to its latest 
development in the modern man. Mill and Spencer, 
Huxley and Tyndall, ought to be better authorities on 
the rules of this game than the ingenious priests who 
relieved the monotony of exile by drawing up an ideal 
code and attributing it to Moses ; men on whose minds 
the first principles of the synthetic philosophy had never 
dawned, and who had no more conception of the condi- 
tions which evolution has brought about in our day than 
the man in the moon. 

Now, I mean to do my best, as soon as I get time, to 
find out what the rules of life are according to the most 
approved modern authorities, and then to play the game 
of life as I do the game of foot-ball, fair and hard. I 
shall never cheat, never shirk, never be afraid. There's 
my creed up to date. If there are any other rules de- 
livered by competent authority, and accepted by all 
players of good standing, I shall obey them too. 



JUNIOR inSGIVINGS. 21 

So don't be anxious about my religious condition. If 
you don't like my creed, my practice is all right. I 
haven't done anything I would be ashamed to have you 
know, except a little foolishness that doesn't amount 
to anything, and isn't worth mentioning. And as long 
as I honestly try to do as you would have me, I can't go 
far astray. Your affectionate 

Clarence. 

junior misgivings. 

Bradford CoLiiEGE, October 14, 1895. 

Dear Mother, — Well, you were right, after all. 
My affair with Kate is off, and my only regret is that 
it was ever on. She is a sweet creature, and I am sorry 
to have caused her pain. But she is light-hearted, and 
she will soon get over it. She was in love with being 
in love ; in love with the good times I gave her ; never 
in love with me. We never really cared for the same 
things. That whirl of gayety she likes to live in would 
be fearfully sickening to me if I had to have it long. 
We were not happy together unless we had somewhere 
to go to, or some excitement or other on hand. She 
will not long remain inconsolable. 

Of course I shall come in for a liberal amount of criti- 
cism at the sewing-circles and afternoon teas and the 
women's club. I know I have done wrong, but I didn't 
mean to. And really it isn't as bad as it looks. We 
never were engaged, though people may have thought 
we were. That I have made the biggest kind of a fool 
of myself, I must of course acknowledge. 

One thing is sure. I shall have nothing more to do 
with young ladies. I am going to give my entire at- 



22 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

tention to my studies. The great economic and social 
questions that are pressing for solution demand the un- 
divided attention of every serious man. I am coming 
to feel more and more as though my mission in life 
might lie in that direction. Once in the thick of the 
fight for economic justice and social equality, I shall 
have little time to think of private domestic happiness. 
I shall never marry. All petty personal pleasures must 
be cast aside as cumbersome impediments by one who 
will serve the cause of the poor and the oppressed. You, 
dear mother, will be henceforth my only feminine con- 
fidant and counsellor. 

As for those religious matters which seem to be your 
main concern, I am afraid I can't give you much satis- 
faction. I have discovered that the rules of the great 
game of life are not so simple as I at first supposed. I 
see at last what you mean by your doctrine of self-sac- 
rifice. In base-ball we often have to make what we call 
a sacrifice hit, which brings in another runner while the 
batter himself gets put out. Then, too, the question 
sometimes comes up whether to try for a very hard ball, 
and take ten chances to one of making an error and 
spoiling your individual record, or only pretend to try, 
and miss it, and so save your individual record at the 
expense perhaps of losing the game. Essentially the 
same principle comes out in all our games. In hare and 
hounds the hares run over the most difiicult and devious 
course they can find, dropping pieces of paper behind 
them at intervals for scent. Then the hounds come 
after them on this trail. All goes well as long as the 
trail is clear and the scent is good. Then we come to 
a point where all scent stops. Then the lazy shirks sit 
down and wait, while the energetic fellows strike out in 



JUNIOR MISGIVINGS, 23 

all directions, until one of them finds the trail. He 
shouts to the others, and they all follow him. Now, 
this willingness to strike out and help find the trail 
for the rest, instead of sitting down and resting and let- 
ting some one else do it, is, I suppose what you mean 
by self-sacrifice. Now, I accept all that. But it seems 
to me that the sacrifices demanded in real life are 
not stereotyped, cut-and-dried forms of traditional self- 
denial. Life is just like the game. Society is all the 
time being brought up short at places where it is im- 
possible to tell which of several possible courses it is 
best to pursue. Then we need men who are not afraid 
to strike out and find a way, where no sure way appears. 
Then we need men who have the courage to make neces- 
sary mistakes. 

Now, this willingness to take on one's self" the risks 

/ and responsibilities of leadership in matters which are 

/ still uncertain, seems to me to be the very essence of 

/ the heroism modern society requires. If there is any 

type of men I hate, it is the stupid, timid conservatives 

who stand still or turn back whenever they come to a 

novel problem or a hard place, and then boast that 

they never go astray. Of course they don't. But, on 

the other hand, they never help anybody to find the 

way ; they are not leaders. 

Now, I gladly admit that Jesus taught the world 
once for all the great lesson of this self-devotion of the 
individual to the service of society. While others had 
anticipated special aspects and applications of this prin- 
ciple, he made it central and supreme. In doing so he 
became the Lord and Master of all who are willing to 
become humble servants of their fellow-men. I acknowl- 
edge him as my Lord and Master ; and that, too, in a 



24 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

mucli profounder sense than I ever supposed the words 
could mean. I do not, however, find much of this, which 
I regard as the essence of Christ's teaching and spirit, 
either in traditional theology or conventional Christi- 
anity. Orthodox theology seems to have been built up 
around the idea of saving the merely individual soul, 
while Christ's prime concern was to show men how to 
lose that selfish sort of soul. 

In short, I propose to tackle the most pressing prob- 
lem of the present day, — that of the just distribution of 
the products of human toil ; and I propose to give my 
time and talents, and to throw away my wealth and 
position, for the sake of contributing what I can to its 
solution. That is what, as I conceive it, Jesus would 
do were he in my place to-day. Now, if leaving all and 
following *Jesus is Christianity, I am and mean to be a 
Christian ; but if you insist on the ecclesiastical defini- 
tion of the term, then I am not a Christian, and prob- 
ably never shall be. Whatever I am, I shall always be, 
Your obedient and devoted son, 

Clarence Mansfield. 

Bradford College, January 26, 1896. 
Deak ISTellie, — So you have made up your mind 
to go into a college settlement. Well, I congratulate 
you. Still, I don't quite like it. To be sure, it is a 
good thing in itself, but it doesn't seem to me that it 
is the best thing for you. If I had the disposition of 
your fate, I think I could find something better than 
that for you. With your gentle, sensitive nature, it 
has always seemed to me that you were better fitted to 
make some one man happy and some one home sweet 
and beautiful, than to go into the wholesale benevolent 



JUNIOR MISGIVINGS. 25 

business. However, I ought not to find fault, for I am 
thinking seriously of doing something very much like 
that myself. Instead of trying to relieve here and 
there a few cases of misery and degradation, as pro- 
miscuous charity tries to do ; and instead of trying to 
elevate the tone of this, that, and the other plague-spot 
in the social system, as the settlement does, — I mean to 
strike at the root of the whole evil, and try to remove 
the causes of which all these notorious evils you refer 
to are the corollaries and effects. 

In other words, I intend to devote my life to the 
cause |of labor, and to the prosecution of such reforms 
as may be necessary to secure for labor its just share 
of the wealth which it produces. 

I will not weary you with a lengthy account of all the 
details of my programme. In fact, they are not very 
clear in my own mind yet. 

I have expected to find myself a lonely and rejected 
social outcast in consequence of the adoption of these 
views, and devotion to this work. But knowing that 
you feel the evils of the existing order as keenly as I 
do, and are to devote your life to binding up the wounds 
they cause, as I am to devote mine to finding a substi- 
tute for the cruel competition which does the cutting, 
I feel renewed comfort and confidence and courage in 
my undertaking. Assured of your sj^mpathy and appre- 
ciation, I shall not mind what the rest of the world may 
say. Even if we do not see each other often, our work 
will be in common for the same great ends. And while 
I am struggling to secure for the bread-wdnner a larger 
portion of the product of his toil, you will be teaching 
. the wife and daughters how to make better use of their 
increased earnings. 



26 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT, 

I may as well confess that I had begun to cherish the 
hope of a closer union ; but it seems that the call for 
renunciation of private happiness has come to us both 
alike, and I suppose we must be content to lose all 
thought of individual happiness in the consciousness 
of devotion to a common cause. I cannot tell you how 
great a support even this connection with you is to me. 
It is so much so that I am sometimes afraid it is the 
desire to be in sympathy with you, quite as much as 
my own consecration to the cause, that has led me to 
renounce my opportunity for worldly success, and enlist 
in this crusade in behalf of the poor and the oppressed. 
Still, I shall endeavor to serve the cause for its own 
sake, for I know no other motive for it would find favor 
in your eyes. 

In the earnest hope that I may be found worthy to 
be your humble co-worker in this glorious cause, I am 
Most sincerely yours, 

Clarence Mansfield. 

Bradford College, February •22, 1896. 
Dear Father, — Your question as to what I am 
going to do when I get through college has set me to 
thinking. The more I think, the less I am able to 
answer it. The fact is, I am all stirred up and unset- 
tled. College has raised a thousand questions, and thus 
far seems to have answered none. I am as much, yes, 
rather more, of a Christian than when I came here ; but 
the creed which I accepted then as a matter of course, 
now bristles with interrogation points, to say the least, 
on every side. So that the ministry is out of the ques- 
tion, even if I were adapted to it. I am not a book- 
worm, and so I stand no show for teaching. I am not 



JUNIOR MISGIVINGS. 27 

a good debater ; I should never do for law. For medi- 
cine I have not the slightest taste. I am afraid I never 
shall be good for anything. 

Business seems to be the only opening; and yet I 
don't like to take that as a last resort. One ought to 
feel drawn toward that, if he is going into it, and not 
be driven to it like a slave. 

Besides, I am beginning to question whether there is 
any chance for an honest man in business nowadays. I 
have been reading a good deal of socialistic literature 
lately ; and I am not sure that they may not be right, 
and the rest of us all wrong. It doesn't seem quite the 
fair thing that I should be here living in idleness and 
comparative luxury, with a practical certainty of a com- 
petence all my days whether I do any work or not; 
while millions of my fellow-men are toiling for the bare 
necessities of a miserable subsistence, 

I can't see why, just because grandfather happened 
to settle, when the town was a wilderness, on a farm 
which included the whole mill-privileges of the present 
city, — I really can't see why we should be practically 
levying an assessment on every poor weaver with a big 
family of children, and every hard-worked woman with 
aged parents to support, that works in our mills or lives 
in our tenements. 

Then your joining the trust last year was the last 
straw on the breaking back of my lingering faith in the 
present industrial system. If a trust isn't robbery with 
both hands, forcing down the wages of the laborer, and 
putting up the price of goods to the consumer, I should 
like to know what is ? Has not the thing a trust aims 
to accomplish been forbidden by law ever since English 
law began to be framed ? Have not the legislatures of 



28 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

half our States passed enactments against it ? Is it not 
denounced on the platform and in the press as the most 
glaring injustice and iniquity of the present generation ? 

I know that you are scrupulously honest and upright, 
and that you would not do anything unless you were 
first convinced of its justice. But I have come to look 
at these things in the light of abstract principles ; and 
in that light they stand before my mind convicted of 
injustice, and condemned to be superseded by more equi- 
table arrangements. Just what that better order is to 
be, I am not sure. Perhaps I am in the condition of a 
socialistic speaker I went to hear the other night, who 
in reply to a demand from the audience for a definite 
statement of his proposed remedies, replied, " We don't 
know what we want, but we want it right away, and we 
want it bad.'' Well, I must confess that these notions 
of mine have not been very clearly thought out. 

In the mean time I am unsettled, dissatisfied, misera- 
ble. And when I try to answer your question about 
my future work, I am made more conscious than ever 
of my wretched intellectual condition. So you must 
have patience with my heresies and my uncertainties ; 
and perhaps matters will clear up a little before the 
time for the final decision comes. 

Your affectionate son, 

Clarence Mansfield. 



SENIOR prospects. 

Brabfobd College, January 23, 1897. 
Dear Eather, — I have at last made up my mind 
what I shall do after graduation, and make haste to tell 
you first of all. I am going into the mills with you. I 



SENIOR PROSPECTS. 29 

shall make manufacturing my business ; and wliat time 
I can spare from business I shall give to politics. 

A good stiff course of political economy for the past 
year and a half has entirely knocked out of me those 
crude notions about the inherent wickedness of capital, 
the tyranny of ability, and the sole and exclusive claim 
of labor to divide among its own hands the entire joint 
product of the three great agencies. What you told 
me, too, about your running at a loss during these hard 
times, has thrown a new light on the matter. I fully 
appreciate the force of your remark that the problem 
of industry is not how to divide the spoils, but how to 
distribute responsibility. I have also gotten over my 
horror of the trust. I recognize that the increased efB.- 
ciency of machinery, the cheapening of transportation, 
the swift transmission of intelligence, the factory sys- 
tem, the massing of population in cities, the concentra- 
tion of capital in large corporations with extensive 
plants and enormous fixed charges, the competition of 
all relatively imperishable and transportable products 
in one vast world-market, have radically changed the 
conditions of production, and made old-fashioned small 
scale production, and free competition between petty 
competitors, impossible. No, father ; I don't think you 
are a robber-baron because you have joined the trust. 
I begin to realize the tremendous pressure a corporation 
is under when it must pay interest, keep up repairs, and 
meet fixed charges, and can come much nearer meeting 
these obligations by producing at a loss, than by not 
producing at all. I see that the cutting of prices below 
cost by old concerns trying to get out of speculative com- 
plications, and by new concerns eager to get a footing in 
the market, makes effective combination an absolute ne- 



30] TBE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

J 

cessity. I see that tlie trust is simply an effective way 
of doing what was ineffectively attempted by informal 
agreements as to trade customs, listings, quotations, and 
schedules of prices, written agreements limiting output 
and fixing prices, the appointment of common agents to 
market the product, and the like. I accept the trust as 
the stage of economic evolution which the world is now 
compelled to enter. 

So much for business. Now, as to politics. You say 
that if I am going into business I had better let politics 
alone. I can't agree with you. What you say about 
the difficulties, discouragements, and disadvantages of 
meddling with politics I know to be true. But I am not 
going into it for what I can get out of it, but for what I 
can put into it. You may be right in saying that I shall 
find it impossible in the cold, hard world of fact to make 
all my fine ideals real. "Well, if I can't make the ideal 
real, I can at least do something toward making the real 
a little more ideal. 

Through a corrupt civil service, honeycombed with 
sinecures and loaded with incompetence ; through valua- 
ble franchises, given away, or sold for a song, or bought 
by bribery ; through the sacrifice of ef&cient municipal 
administration to the supposed exigencies of national 
politics ; through discriminating legislation, wasteful ex- 
penditure, and unnecessary taxation ; through the univer- 
sal failure to find a satisfactory method of dealing with 
the liquor problem, — the poor man is squeezed and 
gouged and plundered by idle office-holders and fat con- 
tractors and favored corporations and sleek saloon- 
keepers and bribe-taking bosses and unrighteous rings. 

I am going into politics to fight these concrete evils. 
I am not going to try to do the workingman's work for 



SENIOE PROSPECTS. 31 

him. I don't believe he really wants anybody to do that. 
And I am sure that it would be the worst thing that 
could happen to him, if he did. But I am going to try to 
give him a chance to do his work under fair conditions ; 
and make it impossible for pensioners or politicians, di- 
rectlj^ or indirectly, to take a penny of his hard earnings 
from him without giving him a penny's worth of commod- 
ities or services in return. And as for trusts and corpora- 
tions which derive their existence and protection from 
the State, I propose to do my utmost to enforce on them 
publicity, and the responsibility that goes therewith. I 
would have their books open to the best expert account- 
ants the State could employ; and I would have some 
way of finding out how much of the vast saving in pro- 
duction these enormous aggregations of capital undoubt- 
edly effect goes to the proprietors, and how much goes 
to the community. 

There, father, you have my programme : through busi- 
ness to earn an honest living for myself, and through poli- 
tics to help every other man to a fair chance to do the 
same. 

In these ways, my views on the relations of capital 
and labor have undergone a pretty radical change. I 
could not tell you the whole story in a letter. But suf- 
fice it to say, while I still believe that there are grave 
defects in the existing industrial system, and believe 
that there are many ways in which it might be improved, 
I see that such improvement must be a long, slow pro- 
cess of evolution, in which one defect after another must 
gradually be sloughed off. I see that such a desire to 
improve the system, and gradually to substitute better 
features in place of those which now exist, is not incon- 
sistent with one's working, practically under the system 



32 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

as it is. Indeedj I am convinced that tlie desired im- 
provement must comCj not through, agitators^ who seek 
to apply abstract principles from without^ but through 
manufacturers and merchants, who understand the pres- 
ent system in its practical internal workings, and are 
thus able to develop the new out of the old. I believe 
that my proper place as a reformer is inside, not outside, 
of the industrial system that is to be reformed. 

That is the extent of the socialism there is left in me. 
At the same time I feel that the strong dose of socialism 
I have taken during the past year or more has done me 
good. Unless I had been through this stage of striving 
to set all things right, I am afraid I should have set- 
tled down into the conventional ruts of the mere busi- 
ness man, who is content to make his own little pile in 
his own way, leaving society to take care of its own af- 
fairs. I am glad that my choice of business coincides 
with your long-cherished wishes ; and I hope that you 
will see that my political purposes are not altogether 
destitute of justice and sound sense. 

Your affectionate son, 

Clarence Mansfield. 

Bradford College, March 2, 1897. 
Dear Mother, — You already know, from my let- 
ter to father, my final decision about a profession. I 
am glad it pleases him, and my only regret is that it 
may not be equally acceptable to you. I know you 
hoped I should be a minister, or at least a doctor or 
lawyer. I recognize the many attractive things about 
all these professions ; but I do not believe I was cut out 
for either of them. If you will pardon once more an 
illustration from your chief abomination, the foot-ball 



SENIOB PROSPECTS. 33 

field, I can sliow you how I feel about it. Business and 
politics seem to me like being actually in the game, play- 
ing it for all you are worth. The lawyer strikes me as 
a sort of umpire, to declare and apply the rules in case 
of fraud or foul play, or the member of the athletic com- 
mittee who conducts the diplomacy. The doctor strikes 
me as the fellow who stands along the side lines, ready 
to bind up the bruised heads and broken limbs. The 
journalist is the man who takes notes and writes it up 
afterward. The minister seems like the man who sits 
on the grand stand, and explains the fine plays and errors 
to the ladies. My heart would not be in any of these 
things ; and consequently I should not do either of them 
well. The studies of the last part of the course, now 
that they are elective, and one carries 4;hem far enough 
to really get into them, sift men out for the right pro- 
fessions, without their knowing when or how it happens. 
The fellows that take to biology, that are handy with 
the microtome and the microscope, go on into medicine 
as a matter of course. The fellows that get waked up 
in philosophy, and take the problems of the universe 
upon their shoulders, naturally go into the ministry. 
The men that take to history and political science are 
foreordained to law. N'ow, while I have been inte- 
rested in three or four lines, my only genuine enthusiasm 
has been economics. Industry and commerce seem to. 
me the basis on which everything else rests. I think 
that I can do more good as a business man and an ac- 
tive force in politics, with a successful business behind 
me, than in any other way. The business man and the 
politician seem to me to be dealing with the real things, 
while the professional men seem to be dealing only with 
the symbols of things. 



84 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

A man's vocation ought to be the expression of his 
ideal. My ideal is to be an effective member of the so- 
cial order that now is, and an eflS.cient promoter of the 
better social order that is to be. 

You complain that I do not say mnch about religion 
nowadays. As I have told you often, religion is not to 
my mind an external form superimposed upon life from 
without, but is the informing spirit of life itself. In 
striving to do with my might the thing my fellow-men 
need most to have done for them, I feel that I am at the 
same time doing what is most acceptable to God, and 
most conformable to the teaching and example of Jesus 
Christ. 

At the same time I have gotten over that antipathy to 
religious institutions which I have had for a year or two. 
I have gone back to the Christian Association here in 
college ; and whether the change is in them or in me I 
don't know, but I find myself able both to do good and 
to get good in their meetings. In fact, unless there 
were some such meeting-ground for the expression and 
cultivation of our ideals, I don't see how they could be 
kept from fading out. It is a great help to feel that in 
spite of the diversity of taste, talent, and vocation, so 
many earnest fellows are going out into the world as 
sincere servants of the one God, followers of the one 
Lord, and workers in the one Spirit. 

I shall also connect myself actively with the Church. 
I do not profess to have solved all the problems of the- 
ology ; and fortunately our Church does not require of 
laymen like me subscription to an elaborate creed. I 
see that the cry, " Back to Jesus," in religion, is as fool- 
ish as the cry ^^Back to Phidias" in art, or "Back to 
Homer" in poetry. We cannot go back to primitive 



SENIOB PBOSPECTS. 35 

simplicity and naivete in any department of life. The 
subsequent development is part and parcel of our spir- 
itual inheritance, of which it is impossible to divest 
ourselves. The Church, as the organized, institutional 
expression of the life of the Spirit of God in the heart 
of humanity, I accept as a spiritual necessity. And I 
should no more think of trying to serve God and my 
fellow-men apart from it, than I should think of shoul- 
dering my individual musket and marching across the 
fields on my own private account to defend my country 
against an invading army. Christian kindness, Chris- 
tian justice. Christian civilization, Christian culture, the 
Christian family, and above all a Christian mother like 
you, I believe in and love with all my heart. And 
now that the Church has come to represent to my mind, 
symbolically at least, all these most precious and benefi- 
cent influences that have entered into the structure of 
my character and life, I cannot do less than freely 
give my influence and support to the institution from 
which, indirectly if not directly, I have freely received 
so much. 

So, my dear mother, if you will look beneath the out- 
ward form to the underlying spirit, I hope you will see 
that after all I am a good deal of a Christian ; and mean 
to be in my own way something of a minister too. 

Your affectionate son, 

Clarence Mansfield. 

Bradford College, June 15, 1897. 

Dearest Nell, — You shouldn't complain that my 

letters for the past six weeks have been all about you, 

and nothing about myself. How can a fellow help it, 

when you have made him the happiest being in the 



36 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

world ? Still, if you command, I must obey \ and begin 
the story of my poor self where I left off. Let's see. 
Where was it ? It seems so long ago and so far away 
that I can scarce recall it. 

" How soon a smile of God can change the world ! " 
Oh ! I remember. The agreement was that you were 
to quit the role of St. Catherine, and condescend to enter 
a home instead of a settlement ; and I was to abjure the 
vows of a St. Christopher to right at once all the wrongs 
of the universe by my own right arm, before entertaining 
the " thought of tender happiness." We were two pre- 
cious fools, weren't we ? Yet it was a divine folly after 
all. Goethe is right in his doctrine of renunciation. If 
we had not faced fairly the giving up of all this bliss, 
it would not be half so sweet to us now. And please 
don't tell me I have ^^ smashed at one blow all your long- 
cherished ideals of social service." It is not so. The 
substance of all those social aims of yours is as precious 
to us both as it ever was ; and we will find ways to 
work them out together. Not one jot or tittle of the 
loftiest standard you ever set before yourself shall be 
suffered to pass away unfulfilled. Your aims and aspi- 
rations are not lost, but transformed, aufgehohen, as the 
Germans say of the chemical constituents of the soil 
when they are taken up to form the living tissue of 
plant or animal. 

There is nothing you ever thought of doing in a settle- 
ment that we will not do better in our home. We shall 
not give less to the world, because we are more ourselves. 
We shall not be less able to comfort those who sorrow, 
because our own hearts overflow with joy. Because we 
are rich in each other, we shall not be less generous to 
all. You shall have all the classes and schools, and 



SENIOR PROSPECTS. 37 

clubs and meetings you wish ; and they will not be the 
least bit less successful for being in the home of a mill- 
owner in our native city of fifty thousand people, instead 
of in some neglected quarter of a city ten times as big. 

Do you know, father is so delighted with what he calls 
the ^^ recovery of my reason/' that he has promised to 
build a house for us this fall. We will work up the 
plans together this summer. One feature of it, though, 
I have fixed on already, which I know you will approve. 
Our library will be a long room, with a big fireplace on 
one side and a cosey den at each end, marked off by an 
arch supported by pillars. These dens we will fit up 
with our college books and furniture, and make them 
just as nearly like our college rooms as we can. And 
then, in the long winter evenings, we will come out of 
our dens before the fireplace ; and you will be my private 
tutor, and with your patient tuition I shall perhaps get 
some good after all out of the Horace and Goethe and 
Shelley and Browning, which you understand and love 
so well ; but which, to tell the truth, I haven't got much 
out of thus far. Somehow we fellows don't get hold of 
those things as you do. 

Isn't it glorious that my examinations come so that I 
can get off for your class day and commencement. To 
be sure, I shall probably forget the fine points in politi- 
cal economy and sociology, in which I have been work- 
ing for honors the past two years. But then, honors or 
no honors, I have got the good out of them anyway; 
and what are honors at the end of college compared 
with love at the beginning of life ? 

I am delighted that you are coming to my commence- 
ment. My part is a dry, heavy thing, which I don't 
expect to make interesting to anybody else 5 but it is in- 



38 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 

tensely interesting to me, for it sums up the inner ex- 
perience which I have been going through these past 
four years, and has helped to give me my bearings as I 
go out into life. My subject is ^^Naturalness, Selfish- 
ness, Self-sacrifice, and Self-realization." You who have 
known me as no one else has all these years, you will 
see what it all means. You catch the idea. 
/ First : We set out as nature has formed and tradition 
mas fashioned us, innocent, susceptible, frail. The hard, 
/cruel world comes down upon us, and would crush us 
under its heavy unintelligible weight. 

Second : We rise up against it ; defy tradition, and 
throw convention to the winds. We in turn strive to 
trample others under foot. But though we wear spiked 
shoes, we find the pricks we kick against harder and 
sharper than our spikes. 

Third : We surrender, abjectly and unconditionally ; 
cast spear and shield away in the extreme of formal, 
abstract self-denial, and ascetic, egotistical self-sacrifice. 
This in turn betrays its hoUowness and emptiness and 
uselessness and unreality. 

Fourth: The Lord of life, against whom we've been 
blindly fighting all the while, lifts us up in his strong 
arms ; sets us about the concrete duties of our station ; 
arms us with the strength of definite human duties, and 
cheers us with the warmth of individual human love ; 
and sends us forth to the social service which to hearts 
thus fortified is perfect freedom and perennial delight. 

Such a process of spiritual transformation I take to 
be the true significance of a college course. To be sure, 
in college, as in the great world of which it is a part, 
none see the meaning of the earlier phases until they 
reach the later; and consequently many never see any 



SENIOR PROSPECTS. 39 

sense in it at all. For the great majority of men go 
through college, as the great majority of them go through 
life, without getting beyond the first or second stage, 
and graduate, as Matthew Arnold, says most men die, 
^^Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.'' 

There, Nell, haven't I been as egoistic this time as 
your altruistic highness could desire ? 
Your devoted lover, 

Clarence Mansfield. 



